Chapter 1: The Shattered World
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– IMC Exploration Corps recruitment poster
The pilots were apprehensive about their latest assignment.
They had dealt with extremely hostile wildlife before, but this was on a scale much larger than a few dog-whistle towers could handle. That meant they would be going up against whatever creatures that had evolved on this world. Which, in turn, meant that they would have no idea what they were facing when they got down there.
They were opting to not use their Titans initially, as they were uncertain of the terrain and needed time to recon for a safe landing of their ship. Rather than take a dropship and risk valuable prospecting equipment, the team had opted to use a disposable drop pod, and then call in the ship when the area was secure.
At least, that was the plan.
As every good strategist knows, no plan survives contact with the enemy. Mark "Pops" Ellis, leader of the pilot squad, could attest to this. He had seen more battlefields ripped apart by outside forces than the rest of his team combined. And he knew when things had gone to shit.
"What's your status, Jack?" the grizzled veteran addressed his reconnaissance operative, Minato "Jack" Ishikawa, with an even tone. Their current location was not what they had expected when they had received the mission data, but he could not let his frustration get through to his squad.
"It's quiet," the disciplined soldier replied, "several humanoid figures currently milling about on the street."
"This is boring, Pops! Where are the targets we were promised?" chimed the loud voice of Zeres "Titan-Tech" Melrin.
"W-what p-part of r-r-radio silence don't you un-un-understand, idiot?" stuttered Amanda "Black Widow" Cook, berating her squadmate's lack of comm discipline.
Ellis sighed as the two went off on an argument, as they often do on missions like this. Typically, the sound of them bickering meant the mission was going well and there was nothing to worry about, but Ellis felt on edge.
Perhaps it was because they had landed their drop pod in an alleyway of a seemingly abandoned, ruined city, only to discover that said city was not only intact, but very much inhabited. Seemingly inhabited by humans, some of whom had animal parts, like tusks, horns, and tails, sticking out of their bodies, Ellis wasn't willing to risk this trip for a chance meeting with some diesel age savages.
"Uh, sir," Natalie "Freshman" Graves' worried voice snapped him out of his contemplation, "there seems to be a pair of the humanoid figures headed down your alley."
A glance out of the alleyway revealed a red-cloaked girl chasing another, red-headed, girl. A quick survey of his surroundings netted Ellis a hiding spot in a convenient dumpster. One lift and hop later, and he was hidden from the two girls who had decided to stop near the dumpster.
"Check, check," Ellis breathed into his helmet mic, "I've been cornered by a pair of possible hostiles. I'm putting them onto the external camera."
Activating his squad leader standard issue external camera and placing it near the lid of the dumpster, his helmet lit up with a video feed of what the camera saw. He knew the rest of the squad had gotten the message and feed, as they had shut up for the moment.
"Penny! What's going on? Why are you running? How did you do that?!" said the red-cloaked girl.
"I-I can't. Everything's fine." The red-head, apparently named Penny, hiccupped as she finished her sentence. "I don't want to talk about it." Another hiccup.
"Penny, if you can just tell me what's wrong I can help you!" argued the red-cloaked girl.
"No-no no, you wouldn't understand." pleaded the Penny girl.
"Let me try, you can trust me!"
"You're my friend, right? You promise you're my friend?"
"…I promise..."
"Ruby... I'm not a real girl." Penny held up her hands, and Ellis zoomed the camera in on them to reveal metal underneath the "skin."
"Holy shit!" exclaimed Zeres, breaking the silence that had encapsulated the squad, "And I thought Spyglass was humanoid!"
The rest of the squad was too caught up in the moment to consciously register Zeres' comment, but they all agreed with the man. Spyglass was one of the most advanced AI in the IMC, and his field frame just looked like a stripped and polished spectre chassis, not this extremely human thing before them.
"Everyone, converge on my position. Keep to the roofs, try and avoid drawing attention." ordered Ellis, "That means you, Melrin."
"Sir! "Penny" has picked up the other girl and is approaching the dumpster!" exclaimed Graves.
Quickly retrieving the camera and setting his armor's lights into off mode, Ellis hid under some of the trash in the dumpster. And not a moment too soon, as "Penny" dropped the girl she called "Ruby" into the open dumpster.
"It's ok, Ruby, they're not bad people, I just don't want you to get in trouble. Just promise me you won't tell anyone about my secret, ok?" Ellis could overhear their conversation from his position underneath a pile of banana peels.
"I promise." the Ruby girl replied to the strange automaton.
Remaining still was Ellis' best bet at the moment, as he did not want to startle the strange girl who had been tossed into his dumpster. Outside he could hear the telltale sounds of heavy combat boots along pavement, stopping just outside his and the girl's hiding spot. He could have turned up the receivers on his helmet's external comm system, but decided against it, as it would repower his armor's lights.
"Ruby" peaked out of the dumpster for him, and, remembering that his external camera was still on, he peaked it slightly out of the trash, just enough to catch a few parts of the conversation going on outside.
From what Ellis could tell, the two soldiers that had stopped outside were questioning the robot-girl about her presence here and whether she was fine after something that had led her to run to the alley. Soon their questions ceased, and the three figures quickly walked off. About a minute after they had left, the girl in the dumpster, Ruby, exited the dumpster. Ellis, still worried about the situation at hand, stealthily placed the camera back on the edge of the dumpster.
"Roll call!" ordered Ellis, trying to suppress the worry in his voice.
"Me, Jack, and Black Widow are directly above you." replied the calm voice of Graves.
"What about Melrin and Spade?"
"We're on our way, Pops!" came the reply of Olivia "Doc Spade" Sherman.
"ETA?"
"30 seconds. Max."
"Good." Too much was not going their way today, so it was relieving to have the entire team in one spot for once.
"Anyone see anything interesting while we were scouting?" questioned Ellis to his team.
"Well…" began Spade, "me and Zeri-poo saw a few shops selling something called Dust. We were able to… appropriate some. Zeri-poo is in the process of determining how much he would need to make a bomb. From our initial observation, it is some kind of high energy fuel, but we can't seem to get it to work right. Oh, and Zeri-poo singed his hair on an explosion of the stuff!"
"Wonderful. Anyone else?"
"There was some commotion at a warehouse I was watching." replied Black Widow, "looked like a local rebel group."
"Any connection to the Militia?"
"Not that I could tell, sir."
"Hmm, alrig-"
*CRASH!* *BOOM!*
"THE HELL WAS THAT?! Widow, status!"
"Uh… I can see a giant robot running down the highway."
"Sir!" exclaimed Graves, "That Ruby girl is heading in that direction!"
"Fuck me." sighed Ellis.
"Anytime, Pops…" came the reply of Spade.
"Never mind! Let's head to the highway, examine this big robot."
The team gathered on the rooftop, then headed to the highway where Widow spotted the robot. Using their free running skills to hop from building to building, the squad quickly covered the distance that the Ruby girl had run.
Despite being the rookie of the group, Graves' free running aptitude was one of the best any of them had ever seen, and she quickly outpaced the rest of the squad. This remarkable speed was why she always ended up being the first to contact the enemy, and the rest of the squad willingly gave her position at point.
"Graves, can you get us some specifics on the robot? Where is it right now?" requested Ellis over the inter-squad comm link.
"It looks like a prototype Titan to be honest, sir," replied Graves, "but to answer your other question, some girl covered the highway in ice and made it fly off."
"…What." The confusion was universal among the rest of the squad; even Zeres having a hard time believing what he had just heard.
"She stabbed her sword into the highway and covered it in ice."
They didn't have time to argue as they reached the end of the buildings and beheld the battle preparing to take place below them. Four girls were standing opposite to the prototype Titan, all wielding melee weapons of some kind.
"Oh, damn! They. Are. Boned." quipped Zeres on the sorry state of the fight before them.
"He's right, sir," Widow said, "They don't stand a chance against that thing!"
"Hmm…" Ellis pondered what to do. On one hand, they could save the girls; on the other, they could just ignore and go back to reconning the area. Of course, anyone stupid enough to fight something like that would probably be the best bet at getting info on the area.
"Sir?"
"We're dropping Tortoise and Weaver; Jack and Graves, stand by unless we go down, in which case, drop your Titans; Spade, I want you to secure those girls, get them out of here. And Melrin?"
"Yeah, Pops?"
"Find that thing's brain and blow it out."
"Gladly!"
"Everyone good? Operation… go!"
Team RWBY prepared their weapons for the battle with Torchwick's Paladin. They had been searching for clues regarding the criminal's activities, and Blake had uncovered dangerous information at the White Fang meeting; information Torchwick did not want them to have.
Ruby had her weapon, Crescent Rose, in its scythe form, and quickly chose an appropriate strategy to execute.
"Freezer Burn!" Ruby shouted to her teammates, knowing they would perform the correct combination of attacks.
Weiss spun Mysteraner's Dust chamber to ice, then elegantly thrust her rapier into the ground, creating a thin film of ice on the ground; similar to what she had done on the highway. The golden girl, Yang, pulled her hands back, reloading Ember Cecilia, and jumped into the air to deliver a shotgun shell backed punch to the ice Weiss had produced. Her fist collided with the ice, throwing up a dense fog over their battlefield.
Blake's faunus ears twitched at an unfamiliar sound. She looked up in the direction of it, and her eyes widened in fear.
Ruby was running through the list of plans in her mind, and was about to call out the next one, when Blake suddenly shouted "Get back!"
The other three huntresses in training glanced questioningly at the cat faunus, before they, too, heard the noise that Blake had. A steady droning sound, like a bomb falling out of the sky.
Blake pointed upwards with a look of pure terror on her face. Her teammates followed the direction of her shaking arm, and saw the two large mechs falling out of the sky. Quickly, they scrambled away from the center of the battlefield, where the robots looked to be landing.
The giant mechs landed dead center of the battlefield, dispelling the fog Weiss and Yang had conjured. They looked similar to, yet vastly different from the Atlesian Paladin. One was huge, a and had landed in a position reminiscent of a gorilla; the other's landing position made it look to be crouching, one hand in a fist resting on the ground, the other wrapped around the massive weapon strapped to its back. They both seemed to have a slight greyish-white glow surrounding their metal armor plating. They were covered in an odd blue dome that had popped up when they landed, and seemed to radiate electricity.
"What are those?!" exclaimed Weiss.
"Torchwick's friends?" offered Yang.
"I've never anything like those before... they look so cool!" Ruby could barely hold the excitement in her voice, and just let herself bask in awe of the new mechs.
Suddenly, three figures in similar blue-gray armor rushed past the team, on a direct path for the robots. One of the figures dashed toward the gorilla-like mech, the top opening up as he clambered across the smooth-looking metal. With a loud hiss, the mech sprang to life, pulling a huge chaingun off its back and into its hands.
One of the other two figures made a beeline for the crouching mech. As the figure approached it, a small gap appeared as the mech began to stand. The figure dropped into a slide, not losing one second of their speed, and was grabbed by the mech. Like the gorilla mech, this one let out the tell-tale sounds of hydraulics as it stood and equipped its weapon.
The third figure never stopped running toward Torchwick's Paladin, and seemed as if they had a death wish. As they drew closer, they suddenly turned and jumped onto the nearby highway pillar, the area around their tailbone lighting up with a pair of strange lights. They ran along for several feet, then abruptly jumped in the direction of the Paladin.
"Watch out!" yelled Ruby to the stranger, seeing the Paladin swing around to take him down.
Either the stranger didn't hear Ruby, or they didn't care, but they seemed to easily climb onto and over the Paladin's armor. The Paladin suddenly began to spin, attempting to throw the stranger off. A bout of manic laughter seemed to echo across the battlefield, and appeared to originate from the stranger.
"That the best you got, bastard!?" shouted the stranger, in a distinctly male voice, "I've ridden Ogres worse than you! And they never got to hear me gloat!"
Weiss shivered at the man's strange and uncouth speech and Yang looked stunned at his brashness. The entire team remained standing with mouths agape at the strange man.
Until 3 more strangers quickly approached them, at least.
Ruby and the others hadn't noticed the other strangers, a man and two women, until they had called out to them. The three new strangers were dressed in armor very similar to the three that had run past earlier.
"Civilians, please fall back to a safe distance!" shouted one of the women. Her voice had an odd accent, yet they could tell the urgency in it.
"Who are you?" Ruby asked, honestly curious who these mysterious people were.
"We will explain when we are not in an active combat area." responded the man.
"There is no reason for you to barge in on our fight and not tell us why!" replied an angry Weiss.
"Princess, you four did not stand a chance against that prototype." the other woman said, with very obvious contempt for the heiress, "No self-respecting person would try and take on a Titan, no matter the stage of completion, with just four people and swords."
"You little!" fumed Weiss.
In the background of Weiss and the rude woman's argument, the sounds of heavy weaponry could be heard echoing across the battlefield, mixed in with a slew of taunts and expletives.
Yang rested her hand on Weiss' shoulder, quieting the girl.
Suddenly the earlier stranger's manic laughter was getting closer. Everyone looked up to see him running back toward them, clutching a small box with some kind of switch.
"Everyone get down!" shouted the less rude woman, her voice containing a recognizable twinge of fear as the madman dashed to them. Not wanting to know what was about to happen, everyone dropped to their stomachs.
"KABOOM!" the mad stranger exclaimed when he pressed the switch on the small box as he passed the prone figures.
A large explosion engulfed the Paladin, the thick armor plating falling apart every second. A fairly unharmed Roman Torchwick stood up from the remains of his broken mech. Sounds of disappointment could be heard from the madman behind them.
"Just got this thing cleaned!" remarked Roman as he dusted off his white suit.
The gorilla mech moved very quickly for something of its size and girth. Dashing toward Roman, its left hand was pulled back into a fist and loosed onto the criminal mastermind.
It was stopped, unexpectedly, by a parasol in the hands of a small girl with two hair colors and a smug look on her face. The mech recoiled and stepped backwards, away from Roman. A shot fired from the other mech was also blocked by the odd girl.
Roman coughed. "Very interesting fight, weirdoes," he shouted across the area, "but we really must be going. Neo?"
The girl flourished her parasol and froze. The gorilla brought its gun back up and fired at the pair of criminals. Bullets passed through and shattered the glass-like illusion. Looking up, Ruby could see Roman and the girl flying away in a convenient bullhead.
The still prone persons slowly stood up; RWBY brushed off their clothes, while the strangers had their hands up to their helmets. Now that they were not in battle, the team could inspect the armor of the strangers, revealing plating on the strangers similar to Atlesian soldiers, but much sparser and bluer.
Engrossed in inspecting the helmeted persons before them, team RWBY almost didn't notice the gorilla mech walking back toward them. It was only about twenty feet away when it stopped and a hatch on the front opened up, and the figure that had gotten into the mech earlier jumped out with a practiced ease.
This stranger seemed to be male, by the stockiness of his frame and the voice he addressed them with.
"Are you all ok?"
Weiss spoke first, before any of her teammates could answer.
"What is going on? Who are you people?"
"They're fine, Pops." the rude woman replied for them.
"That's good. Now then," he continued, taking off his helmet as he did, "who is in charge of this place?"
A/N Hope you liked! This came to me while reading Attack on Pacific Titan Grimm Fall by JackThePegasus. I brought in the OC pilot team from my in-development Titanfall/Evolve fic. I you are worried that they might seem OP, don't worry; they will have to go up against Grimm sooner or later, and the Titans can't lock anything except other Titans, not to mention the unwieldy nature of their primary weapons.
Review, follow, fave, potato. See you later!
P.S. If anyone could help me out by taking a bit of their time to look over my stories, I would really appreciate it.